Some of your bloggers recently attended the American Conference Institute’s annual Drug and Medical Device Litigation Conference in New York. One of the conference panels addressed a recent unsettling ruling in a non-drug-device case that held communications training provided by defense counsel for their client’s employees was not only discoverable but admissible at trial. In re Google Play Store Antitrust Litigation, 664 F. Supp.3d 981, 983 (N.D. Cal. 2023). Moreover, some of the “practices” that found their way into the opinions seemed to us not only privileged but entirely unobjectionable:
Plaintiffs also point out that, for years, [defendant] has directed its employees to avoid using certain [legal] buzzwords in their communications. . . . Eight years later, [defendant] still was telling employees . . . “[a]ssume every document you generate … will be seen by regulators.”
United States v. Google LLC, ___ F. Supp.3d ___, 2024 WL 3647498, at *113 (D.D.C. Aug. 5, 2024) (citation omitted). That’s only good sense, and no different than the other side (at least if they have good lawyers) tells its own individual plaintiffs before they have to testify. Continue Reading Privilege and Lawyer-Provided Employee Training
